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Google and Apple have always been a study in contrasts when it comes to their engineering and product development styles, but it was a point that was driven home to me in a big way this month when I tried Google Glass.
These contrasting styles could have a major impact on you as you implement?BYOD programs at your organizations.
The Google Glass Explorer program is for all intents and purposes a giant focus group that end users?pay for the privilege to join. ?As such, you can't necessarily call it a finished product, but even that says so much about how Google approaches design and product delivery.
Related: Five common misconceptions about Google Glass
Google typically does not deliver finished products. They are engineers iterating and tinkering and their work often lacks the polish we typically are used to with Apple products (Maps notwithstanding). Google throws things out to the public long before most of us would call them ready, but always with the knowledge that it will get better ... because it's Google.?
But Google has slowly started to learn from Apple. In the case of Glass, its clever packaging, delivery, and stellar customer service were straight from Apple's playbook.
Apple, on the other hand, would never put out a product like Google Glass and leave it to a group of early adopter super users to help design what the final product will look like. In an interview last year with the London Evening Standard,?Apple's Jony Ive had this to say about focus groups: "We don?t do focus groups -- that is the job of the designer. It?s unfair to ask people who don?t have a sense of the opportunities of tomorrow from the context of today to design."
Steve Jobs before him once said about the same subject, "It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."
Before the iPad came, I wondered why I would need such a device when I already had an iPhone and it fit in my pocket. But because I lacked the imagination to see it didn't mean it wasn't a great idea --and very soon we saw its impact and continue to feel it to this day.
Over the last decade in particular, Apple has had a feel for consumer desire and they have delivered products people want -- to the point that it has changed expectations of what people look for from software and devices at work.
But Apple has not shown as much capability to iterate that initial idea. If you look at Apple in 2013 they are struggling to adapt to changing markets, particularly demand for lower-cost smartphones and tablets, and its?revenue has flattened out.
For companies still struggling to come to grips with consumerization, it's important to understand these two contrasting styles and figure out how they fit into your organization.
Source: http://lxer.com/module/newswire/ext_link.php?rid=188762
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